Now I'm left wondering why not. I know that BioPerl is still more expansive, but is BioPython so lacking that it doesn't even merit a mention? That's a very sobering thing to think about, as somebody who's been really enjoying using Python over Perl lately.

In any case, this book mainly seems to center over basic language concepts, which is sad in some ways, because many of the examples are doing things that I imagine are "reinventing the wheel" if you're using a library like BioPython. Reinventing the wheel for learning has its merits, but it's not very useful to someone like me, who would find a primer that included an introduction into a powerful library that takes care of some of the drudge work more useful.

It's possible that this book is more useful (to people of my type) than my skimming indicates, but unfortunately I probably won't delve into it to find out.